Re: Managing complexity?
On Tue, Apr 2, 2019 at 2:26 AM Prem Chandavarkar wrote: there is no neutral outside ever available. One is always within a system, > or rather, always within a hierarchy of systems, almost all of them complex > and polycentric. Just as when one is within a room one can never see all > four walls simultaneously, a position of observing from within a system > means substantive parts of the system will never be clearly visible to > one’s cognition. > > This should be the starting point for any analysis. One has to work from > the inside out rather than the outside in, and begin with the following > questions: > >- What are the boundary conditions that define the limits to which >one's cognition can clearly perceive the system? >- How porous (or how impermeable) are these boundary conditions? > > Prem, your thinking in this thread has an ethical focus, something like care of the autopoietic self. I find your intention very searching and illuminating. However, upon consideration I doubt whether the dichotomy between closed and open systems, which you build up toward the end of your post, really offers any guide to action. As far as I can see, all human systems strive for a degree of openness as a precondition of learning and change, and for a degree of closure as a precondition of agency. Your posts are crucial in helping us all refine the systems vocabularies that we use. Here's what your reflections provoke in me. Observing systems not only observe other observing systems, they also internalize them, constantly. This is because the boundary conditions that make us who we are, are exceptionally porous. Indeed, if we are lucky enough to have any sort of boundary at all, any sort of psychic and somatic autonomy, it is because a larger society gave us resources for indviduation. By resources, I mean mental images and schemas, corporeal practices, material and technical affordances - all coming from outside the individual, and usually from outside the family, the neighborhood, the province and even the language or country. It is in relation to such outside resources - by internalizing some and at least partially rejecting others - that one becomes an individual, or a community, or a society (Simondon, and later Stiegler, have a lot to say about this). Because of this permeability, highly invasive techniques are continually designed and applied in order to get people to behave, not as their own system with its own autopoietic compass, but instead, as a subordinate or even determinate part of another, more malleable system. These techniques are turned upon individuals, communities, societies. Now, if I understand you right, your aim is to escape such capture and reformulate the conditions under which individuation occurs. That would also be my goal, not because I desperately want to become an autonomous individual, but because I'd like to participate in certain kinds of relatively autonomous communities which barely even exist today. But the problem is, other people and other systems are continually trying to stop us from achieving these kinds of goals. Not only do they create barriers to any deep restructuring of the material and technical affordances with which we shape ourselves and our communities, but they also make great efforts to induce different corporeal practices at the level of our own bodies, and to install different imaginaries and logical schemas in our own minds. A very relevant case in point is the way libertarian and neoclassical economists, acting in concert with capital interests and their representatives in government, convinced a large proportion of the world's educated classes that they are really entrepreneurs, looking to maximize personal profit through innovation. That's an impressive production of subjectivity. The neoliberal movement was able to do that because they have highly advanced techniques for observing, analyzing, and intervening on other systems. The list of such techniques is long. Take an opinion poll: a quaint thing that used to allow a politician to get a rough view, every few weeks or so, of the demos as a differentiated political body. Now compare it to the real-time analysis of Facebook likes at country level, which allows not only for a continuous granular apprehension of what the demos cares about, individual by individual, but also for a differentiated intrusion into our thinking processes, via targeted advertising and symbolic stimulation of all sorts. This occurs simultaneously on the level of the person and the population, and it is hardly the only example of such observation/intervention. Governments, corporations, militaries, police forces and some civil-society organizations develop technical systems for the observation of other systems. Their aim is to assess what's happening, whether in the financial markets, among criminal gangs, in a certain sector of professional endeavor such as scientific research, in a certain ecosystem, etc. When a
DARK HAVENS: Confronting Hidden Money & Power - April 5-7 Berlin
Dear Nettimers, I am writing to invite you to our next conference, DARK HAVENS: Confronting Hidden Money & Power, on April 5-6 at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien. https://www.disruptionlab.org/dark-havens This time we are focusing on the discourse of anti-corruption, tax havens, offshore companies and whistleblowing. The programme is in partnership with Transparency International and we will have with us many investigative journalists, truth-tellers and a French whistleblower. We will also show the German Premiere of the film "The Panama Papers" by Alex Winter, produced by Laura Poitras. On Sunday April 7, we will have the psycho-geography offshore tour by RYBN.org in collaboration with Supermarkt. We are also planning a new Activation community event following the conference: "Diving Deeper into Data", which will take place on April 17 at STATE Studio. You find the programme of the community events here: https://www.disruptionlab.org/meet-ups Below you can read the programme of the conference in detail. We hope to see you there, this is our 15th conference! All the best, Tatiana & the Disruption Network Lab Team - "DARK HAVENS: Confronting Hidden Money & Power" #DNL15 DARK HAVENS brings together people from around the world who have been part of global investigations and leaks, have blown the whistle on corporations, been put on trial, and who have taken severe personal risks to confront hidden money and power. Location: Kunstquartier Bethanien, Studio 1, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin. Schedule: April 5 (16:00-21:15) incl. German Premiere of the documentary 'The Panama Papers'. April 6 (15:30-20:30). April 7 (12:30-18:30) Offshore Tour Operator – workshop & walk by RYBN.ORG. Language: English. Tickets: https://pretix.eu/disruptionlab/darkhavens/ Details: https://www.disruptionlab.org/dark-havens - SCHEDULE: # Friday April 5 · 2019 16:00 - 17:30 – PANEL HIDDEN TREASURES: How the Global Shadow Economy Drives Inequality. Nicholas Shaxson (Journalist, author of Treasure Islands, and Finance Curse, UK/DE), Maira Martini (Senior Policy Advisor, Transparency International, BR/DE). Moderated by Simon Shuster (Reporter for TIME, RU/DE). 17:45 - 19:15 – PANEL - LEAKING MASSIVE DATASETS: Security, Openness, and Collective Mobilisation. Ryan Gallagher (Investigative Reporter & Editor, The Intercept, UK). Friedrich Lindenberg (Data Team Lead, OCCRP, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, DE). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE). 19:30 - 21:15 – FILM SCREENING: THE PANAMA PAPERS. Directed by Alex Winter, (USA, 2018, 94 min) # Saturday April 6 · 2019 15:30 - 16:15 – ARTISTIC TALK - THE GREAT OFFSHORE RYBN.ORG (Extra-disciplinary Artistic Research Platform, FR). Moderated by Ela Kagel (Digital Strategist and Founder of SUPERMARKT Berlin, DE). 16:30 - 18:00 – KEYNOTE - PANAMA PAPERS: How the Rich and the Powerful Hide Their Money Frederik Obermaier (Investigative Journalist, Süddeutsche Zeitung, DE). Moderated by Max Heywood (Transparency International Global Outreach and Advocacy Coordinator, UK/DE). 18:30 - 20:30 – PANEL - SILENCED BY POWER: Anti-corruption Journalists and Whistleblowers Facing Violence and Persecution Pelin Ünker (Freelance Journalist, Member of ICIJ.org, TR), Stéphanie Gibaud (UBS Whistleblower, FR), Khadija Ismayilova (Investigative journalist and Radio Host, AZ - on video), Moderated by Michael Hornsby (Communications Officer, Transparency International, UK/DE). # Sunday April 7 · 2019 12:30 - 18:30 – WORKSHOP @ Supermarkt THE OFFSHORE TOUR OPERATOR RYBN.ORG (Extra-disciplinary Artistic Research Platform, FR) Maximum 20 Participants - SOLD OUT - 15th conference of the Disruption Network Lab. Curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli. In cooperation with Transparency International. Funded by: Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital Cultural Fund of Berlin), Reva and David Logan Foundation (grant provided by NEO Philanthropy), Checkpoint Charlie Foundation. Supported [in part] by a grant from the Open Society Initiative for Europe within the Open Society Foundations. In partnership with: Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Partner Venues: Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien, Supermarkt Berlin, and STATE Studio. In collaboration with: Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and Whistleblower Netzwerk. Communication Partners: Sinnwerkstatt and Furtherfield. -- Tatiana Bazzichelli // Artistic Director Disruption Network Lab http://disruptionlab.org Twitter: @disruptberlin // @t_bazz PGP: disruptionlab.org/pgp # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org #
Re: Managing complexity?
> On 02-Apr-2019, at 9:18 AM, John Hopkins wrote: > > The 'size' of the system is an externally applied abstraction in that, unless > one is speaking theoretically, a 'system' is always a subset of wider system: > a subset conveniently defined via limits (of interaction with that wider > system) and so-called boundary conditions. This hits the nail bang on the head. The diagram that Brian shared is a useful reflection, and there is nothing substantive one can dispute about it. The point is whether that diagram is a useful framework or launching pad for deciding how one acts, and this is where I have concerns. To look at the diagram (or any diagram for that matter) one must ask where the observer of the diagram is - and it assumes there is a neutral ‘outside’ where the observer stands in order to perceive the system as a whole, and the diagram offers clarity to this gaze. However, there is no neutral outside ever available. One is always within a system, or rather, always within a hierarchy of systems, almost all of them complex and polycentric. Just as when one is within a room one can never see all four walls simultaneously, a position of observing from within a system means substantive parts of the system will never be clearly visible to one’s cognition. This should be the starting point for any analysis. One has to work from the inside out rather than the outside in, and begin with the following questions: What are the boundary conditions that define the limits to which one's cognition can clearly perceive the system? How porous (or how impermeable) are these boundary conditions? As a sentient being, the clarity and authenticity of my boundary conditions are defined by the skin of my body. As one tries to expand awareness beyond the body, this clarity reduces drastically (although there are practices by which I can work to expand the limits of my clear cognition). I cannot treat the limits of my skin as a closed and impermeable boundary, for that would violate the second law of thermodynamics which states that any closed system moves rapidly towards the maximum possible level of entropy (basically, what happens when I die). If I am to continue to live, my body as a system must be open to energy flows from the environment. These may be physical flows, such as air and food, or they may be flows such as companionship and community which preserve my inner mental health. These energy flows must sustain the condition that the biologists Maturana and Varela termed as ‘autopoiesis’, or ‘self-making’. The energy flows through my body resist entropy and remake my body on a constant basis. Of course, this process is on a declining scale and I will eventually die, but that loops into a larger system of autopoiesis at a scale beyond individual bodies. As long as I am alive, I can live only as an open system that achieves autopoiesis - a term that some theorists have defined as ‘the ratio between the complexity of a system and the complexity of its environment’. Since I must think and act from the inside out, this implies that I must perceive and organise my existence as within a nested hierarchy of complex systems. My body, by itself is a complex system, but then works outwards toward family, community, neighbourhood, city, and all of this must respect being embedded within the earth (as Gaia?) - the primary complex living system that no human can escape. The principle of subsidiarity must prevail here, where the lowest level in the hierarchy is self-sufficient to the maximum extent, and delegates what it cannot deal with upwards, and there is a chain of communication in both directions along the hierarchy. Autopoiesis and subsidiarity are the basic principles of life that cannot be violated. Unfortunately the conceptual framework by which we perceive and organise ourselves works in the opposite direction. The economic assumption of the invisible hand as a means of managing complexity rests on the assumption of each individual as a selfish maximiser of his/her own utility. In other words, governance and market regulation seek to push us towards seeking to be closed systems. And the ideal of the social contract treats the individual citizen as politically passive, assumes that government possesses the expertise to offer welfare to citizens through the rule of law, and each citizen will willingly sacrifice a portion of liberty in order to partake in this welfare. This provokes a top-down system that suppresses subsidiarity. Any closed top-down system can resist entropy only through power, and since power has an inherent impulse to conquest, we create a capitalist model that is predicated on indefinite growth. As Kate Raeworth remarked, we have an economy that must grow whether or not we thrive, whereas we need to thrive whether or not the economy grows. There have been two major waves in the history of global capitalism that
